


unravel

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: SASO 2017 [17]
Category: Prince of Stride: Alternative (Anime)
Genre: Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 19:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11297712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: Five things Tomoe lost, and one that he kept.





	unravel

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 2: Tic-Tac-Toe | Prompt: “It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I’d known, maybe I’d have kept tighter hold of them, and not let unseen tides pull us apart.”  
> [originally posted here](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/22249.html?thread=12487657#cmt12487657)

 

 _5\. a metal button, standard-issue, slightly dented._  
It was shiny when Tomoe first found it. It had fallen to the ground by the school gates, frayed threads still dangling from behind; as he picked it up, they slipped through his fingers and blew away in the balmy breeze. He saw it so clearly still, the daylight reflecting off its rounded surface, cool and smooth. For a second, he had held a tiny sun in his hands.  
  
He’d wanted to return it a week later, when they were changing in the club room and he saw one of Heath’s cuffs missing a button, but he had left it at home on his dresser. After that, he never had the chance.

 

_/_

 

 _4\. a white elastic hair tie, knotted neatly at the ends.  
__You can have it,_ Kyousuke had said. _Your hair’s growing out._

Tomoe brushed his bangs out of his eyes, looked in the mirror, looked again. He had not meant to grow out his hair. Nor had he the intention of letting it get to ponytail length. He just hadn’t had time to go to the hairdresser’s, and it seemed like such a trivial thing when he could be running instead.  
  
When he slid the band down his wrist, he could not help but notice how loosely it fit. Around Kyousuke’s lithe, whip-cord tight wrist, it was snug; how well he knew them, those hands, and the way they felt against his own.

 

_/_

 

 _3\. a burnt-out sparkler that you used to spell your names across the night sky._  
They bought their own stash of fireworks. Tomoe had pointed out to the other two that the third years would be selfish with theirs, and Heath, reluctantly, had concurred. Kyousuke had said nothing, merely looked up at the clouds and remarked on the stately, steady pace of the wind that evening. Against a starless sea, a dark, rippling sky, their sparklers were blinding; they buried them by the shore afterward, and the sand got underneath Tomoe’s fingernails and in between his toes. It took him a long time to wash them out.

 

_/_

 

 _2\. a photograph, pressed into your hand at the airport by an unlikely well-wisher._  
At high noon on Monday, Tomoe had counted on being alone at the departures gate, and that suited him fine. It wasn’t like Riku would bother skipping school just to see him off. If Tomoe had been pressed to name one person who might have, he’d have said Kyousuke, maybe, who already had a reputation for delinquency that he wore like a shadow these days, the kind that dogged his footsteps until it became its own kind of armour between him and the rest of the world.  
  
How Diane Hasekura had known his flight details, he could not even begin to say, though he could have ventured a guess. Any number of guesses. Diane was a woman of considerable resources, after all.  
  
_Heath told me_ had not been one of his guesses.  
  
She smiled, wrapped him in a hug and took his hands in hers, kissed his cheek, butterfly-light. _That idiot doesn’t know how to say goodbye. So this is from us both._

 

_/_

 

 _1\. a scrap of paper, torn from the corner of an old notebook. on it—  
_ Tomoe could not count the number of things he had lost, along the way. They were infinite, they were dust and ashes that he’d crushed under his thoughtless tread, and he could no more pick them up again than he could chase down the storm at the end of the road. But he had always been recalcitrant, too stubborn for his own good.

  
So it rained, and so Tomoe ran, paper crumpled in his fist. He did not need it any more.

 

_/_

 

 _0\. a number, written in a flowing hand; the ink, a deep indigo, now faded._  
(For Kyousuke’s number was burnt in his memory, and try as he might to forget it, he could not.)


End file.
